To ask about your experience of Virgin Media?

[Cutesbabasmummy]

We've been with BT for 9 years. Never really thought about changing tbh. But, our 5 year old SMART Samsung TV has turned out not to be so smart, as we can no longer access i player etc through it. We also quite fancy having Netflix. We have an Amazon Fire Stick which wont work with our Samsung, although it will work on other tvs in our house annoyingly! So rather than splash out on something like Chromecast, we thought we would look at other options, one of which is to have phone, broadband and tv from Virgin. We only have phone and internet from BT currently and pay £170 per quarter. It would cost us £38 per month i.e. £360 per year plus a £20 installation fee for a 12 month contract with Virgin. It seems like we could really save money and get more bang for our buck. The only snag is that our phone line where the router would be is the other side of the room to the tv. Can this be connected via wireless? Please let me know what you thin of Virgin! I know some people swear they are the devils spawn, but then people also say that about BT and SKY.

[TenancyTroublesAgain]

They fucked up my order and put me on a more expensive package. It took two months and numerous calls and emails to get it sorted and it still didn't end up being the right package in the end. It was a basic fix. Look at what I ordered and price according to the order confirmation!

Prior to that they blacklisted me because someone signed up in my name years ago without my knowledge and they didn't carry out any checks whatsoever... They wouldn't remove the blacklist despite me being able to prove I lived in a different country... Found out who it was and got them them to pay luckily.

[PookieSnackenberger]

God help us when Virgin take over most of the NHS - but that's another thread altogether.

[PookieSnackenberger]

They are truly terrible.

We have had complete loss of phone and broadband many, many times and they couldn't give a damn (The worst was when DMIL was dying and we had no phone for a week). We both work from home so it directly impacts on our working lives - again, they couldn't give a toss.

It is the same fecking problem every time. Engineer visits box on street, knocks out our (poorly positioned at front of box) connection, we call to explain the problem, they then take a week to come out and plug the wire back in. Sick of them, but unfortunately they have the fastest broadband and are marginally less terrible than BT.

Once I spotted their van and engineer on my way home. Oh God I thought, I hope they don't knock out the wire again. Guess what, they did! It doesn't matter how much we escalate, explain how many times the same thing has happened, they are unable to deviate from the script. Awful. The only good thing is that DH's company pay the bill.

[PavlovaPrincess]

Virgin are shite. Customer service is terrible. They once cut us off 'by accident' for two days. Broadband is fucking awful and drops out at peak times. They're really expensive and it goes up every year. At one point, they would've offered you a better deal to stay with them, now they just don't give a shit. In fact, they don't give much of a shit about anything once you've signed up.

Avoid like the plague. I can't slag them off enough to do justice to how terrible they are

[Floralnomad]

We have a full Sky Tv package and a very good internet / phone deal with BT , personally I wouldn’t touch Virgin with a barge pole , our road was dug up last year to put in the cables , they were back a few weeks ago to redo the work as it was so shoddy , there is no way on this earth I’d let them anywhere near my drive / house with the current standards of work . The same has happened in the next village along as well , they are going back there to redo the work this month .

[Rugbydad15]

Been with virgin for several years, occasionally have problems with the broadband speed but generally they've been happy to reimburse. Over similar time span my sister has been through talk talk, bt and sky broadband and the lack of speed is really noticeable.
Phoned earlier this month and got an upgrade to their new box and fixes a lot of the slow reaction times from the earlier box which was pretty bad.
On the TV /broadband connection, you could try a powerline adapter? We use this to connect our router and Samsung smart TV and it works really well.

[CB1234]

They are crap. Regularly lose service. We called them out to fix the phone last Friday. We were promised a network engineer to fix a faulty wire at the box at the top of our road and a lot her engineer last Saturday as the catch up service keeps curing off. Neither turned up so we ha E had no phone or catch up on the box for a week

[mehhh]

I have always been with bt, parents have just moved from virgin because it was horrendous, internet speed was next to nothing if I went round I just used data to save the annoyance

[keepingbees]

We had the tv and broadband. It frequently went down in our area which meant we lost both the tv and internet, sometimes for a whole day at a time. Annoying.
The box was verrrry slow to respond and I just couldn't get used to navigating it. The only thing I liked was being able to record 3
programmes at a time. We went back to Sky as soon as our contract was up.

[Amanduh]

Have broadband with virgin and tv with sky. The broadband is fab.
Never had any problems with virgin.
Sky were an absolute shitshow - arranging to install broadband, cancelling, charging me when i hadn’t received anything etc etc. Once all was sorted and installed I haven’t had any problems. I think it really just is luck!

[CotswoldStrife]

Agree that when it works it's good, but when it doesn't the customer service is utterly appalling. Really, really bad. The constant price rises are a pain as well, we are looking around now because we've had constant issues with our 5G.

Also - they will often only do things (eg fixes when things go wrong) if they are speaking to the account holder which has caused issues in the past. Do not go anywhere near their mobile phone side which is even worse than the TV/phone/broadband!

[KenDoddsDadsDogIsDead]

I have been with them for about 8 years. Broadband is good but I really think the TV is waste of money as you could probably get many of the basic channels on Freeview( depends on your viewing requirements I guess). I have never had Sky but definitely think Virgin is better than BT. Maybe look at whether they are in your area first and then check the speeds etc

[ReinettePompadour]

When its working Virgin is great. The problem is that when theyre not working theyre down for hours and sometimes days. We are only in February and we have had Virgin down/offline 4 days this year so far.

[fizzytonicplease]

Been with virgin for a few months and so far so good, we pay £25 a month for basic tv, phone and broadband, best deal we could get.

[CcleanSheet9]

Virgin Media is branded Virgin, but it is owned/run by a company called Liberty Global

It is made up of all the previous cables companies in the UK

[usualGubbins]

Been with Sky for ages - TV, phone, internet and now mobile. Customer service has always been spot on, no hassle, everything works well. I've heard some real horror stories about Virgin, but I would say if they stopped sending me letters telling me how brilliant it would be if I changed to them they might be a bit cheaper!

[liz70]

VM are a bit meh, but we live in an area with pretty crappy cable connection no matter who you're signed up with, so there's little point us switching. If I were you, if your BT BB is okay, I would stick with them and get a non smart TV plus Chromecast, Youtv, Roku or similar. We have a 10+ years old Panasonic non smart tv, plus a Chromecast. With the CC we can watch on our television anything from iPlayer, All4, my5 and ITVHub or STVplayer, plus any other compatible app e.g. Youtube, Netflix if we subscribed, other tv stores like TalkTalk, Curzon, etc. for film rentals. Spotify etc. There are loads of compatible tv, film and radio apps plus you can also cast your own stuff to the tv. Best £30 we've spent in a long time.

[SparklyMagpie]

NoMoreUsernames I also mainly use Now tv and Netflix

[Tink2007]

We were with Sky and moved to Virgin last year. It was quite frankly the worst year in terms of quality and customer service. It was so bad we paid to end our contract and go back to Sky.

[SellFridges]

Their customer service is sometimes a bit weird, but I have always managed to get a good deal. We are in a cable area so we’d be stupid to go with anyone else to be honest.

[Doctroo]

Been with Virgin since 1998 when they were Telewest. So 20 years. My email address is still blueyonder.co.uk.

Never really any problems, and I have recently upgraded to TiVo, and th engineer replaced my modem for free.

Pay £46 a month for phone, telly, internet. All work fine. I don't have a HD TV (an old Sony Trinitron - picture better than HD IMO) and am not fussed about Netflix.

[NoMoreUsernames]

They're fine until you want to leave when their staff are happy to hurl abuse at you down the phone. Oh and the constant price hikes. Never again. I just have now TV and netflix now, no contracts other than broadband.

[SparklyMagpie]

RadioGaGoo agree with you 100% on that

I'm thinking about switching.

Costs a fortune for fuck all and the customer service is absolutely shocking

I'd never recommend

[sparklepops123]

With virgin and really need to move. Their prices have gone up EVERY year , when we got a new computer we took out some type of tech insurance with them then after a time we cancelled. Only realised a long time later we were still paying the extra, they denied we ever cancelled and refused to reimburse.

[SwarmOfCats]

Virgin have been great! I switched to Sky a few years ago because they had a good deal on - had nothing but problems (too long to describe here). It was so bad that I went through the communications ombudsman; Sky had to apologise, refund and compensate. Back with virgin again now, and can’t complain!